A Naked Singularity: A Novel

Summary

A Naked Singularity tells the story of Casi, a child of Colombian immigrants who lives in Brooklyn and works in Manhattan as a public defender--one who, tellingly has never lost a trial. Never. In the book, we watch what happens when his sense of justice and even his sense of self begin to crack--and how his world then slowly devolves. It’s a huge, ambitious novel clearly in the vein of DeLillo, Foster Wallace, Pynchon, and even Melville, and it's told in a distinct, frequently hilarious voice, with a striking human empathy at its center. Its panoramic reach takes readers through crime and courts, immigrant families and urban blight, media savagery and media satire, scatology and boxing, and even a breathless heist worthy of any crime novel. If InfiniteJest stuck a pin in the map of mid-90s culture and drew our trajectory from there, A Naked Singularity does the same for the feeling of surfeit, brokenness, and exhaustion that permeates our civic and cultural life today. In the opening sentence of William Gaddis’s A Frolic of His Own, a character sneers, "Justice? You get justice in the next world. In this world, you get the law." A Naked Singularity reveals the extent of that gap, and lands firmly on the side of those who are forever getting the law.

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A Naked Singularity - Sergio De La Pava

part one

The Lord looks down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there are any that act wisely, that seek after God.

They have all gone astray, they are all alike corrupt; there is none that does good, no, not one.

—Psalm 14: 2, 3

chapter 1

Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people?

—epigraph above entrance to Criminal Court.

—noise background,

My getting out or what?!

Eleven hours and Thirty-Three minutes since meridian said the clock perched high atop a ledge on the wall and positioned to look down on us all meaning we were well into hour seven of this particular battle between Good and Evil and, oh yeah, that was Good taking a terrific beating with the poultry-shaped ref looking intently at its eyes and asking if it wanted to continue. We were what passed for Good there: the three of us and anyone we stood beside when we rose to speak for the mute in that decaying room (100 Centre Street’s AR-3); and in that place, at that moment, Evil had us surrounded.

The puppetmaster pulling strings from behind the bench was a bloated pink one on loan from the Bronx. The nameplate directly before him announced J. MANOS in calligraphic gold. Its owner and referent had decided no one would taste freedom that arctic night and had been slowly apprising us of that decision for the aforementioned seven-plus hours. And all that while he fostered this ugly habit of echoing the end of his sentences, but only after the kind of delay that fooled you into thinking you were in the clear, as in bail is set in the amount of ten thousand dollars . . . ten thousand dollars and often all emphatic(!) too.

The DA was essentially bony but with a slightly bulbous face beneath a mushroom hairdo that rose and expanded from dark root stem to bottle-blond cap. She displayed no discernible personality or affect as she uttered (through an inconsistent lip-distorting-yet-thankfully-dry lisp) the customary declarations of mock moral outrage like this defendant hath warranted on every one of his twenty three cathes, this defendant itha four-time predicate felon and this defendant hath used twelve different aliathes. Unsurprisingly, these words—when spoken in those or similar combinations and to that audience—were more than sufficiently persuasive and as such invariably caused high numbers with commas to emerge from behind the nameplate. The numbers then attached to a body, one that by then had traversed the entirety of a creaking assembly line, and as a result the body stayed in.

[bod-y (bŏd´ē) n., pl.—ies. 9. CJS. Inarguably odious term used by N.Y.C. Department of Correction and other court personnel to denote incarcerated criminal defendants: There are three hundred bodies in the system so we should be busy. He’s bringing the next batch of bodies down now, I’ll let you know if your guy’s one of them.]

And this was before anything even remotely insane had happened when I still occasionally thought about things like how it was that people were reduced to bodies, meaning the process. How you needed cops to do it and how their master, The System, needed to be constantly fed former people in order to properly function so that in a year typical to the city where the following took place about half a million bodies were forcibly conscripted. And if you learn only one thing from the ensuing maybe let it be this: the police were not merely interested observers who occasionally witnessed criminality and were then basically compelled to make an arrest, rather the police had the special ability to in effect create Crime by making an arrest almost whenever they wished, so widespread was wrongdoing. Consequently, the decision on who would become a body was often affected by overlooked factors like the candidate’s degree of humility, the neighborhood it lived in, and most often the relevant officers’ need for overtime.

None of which tells you the exact process by which someone, let’s say You, becomes a body, which account I sort of impliedly semi-promised, so imagine you are on the street, then in an incident, then a stranger’s hand is on your melon making sure it doesn’t bang the half-blue/half white American-only car with the colorful bar across the top. Imagine that, easy if you try. Now the police have twenty-four hours to get you in front of a judge for your criminal court arraignment but if you’re the perceptive sort you will monitor Time’s ceaseless consumption of this period yet rightly detect no corresponding increase in ambient urgency.

Your first stop is the appropriate precinct where the arresting officer or A/O stands you before another cop known as the Desk Sergeant. He tells him the tale of your alleged sin and the two, speaker and audience, join their heads to decide what section(s) of the New York Penal Law to charge you with. Now you’ve been informally charged and with that out of the way you may be asked to remove all your clothes (the propriety of this being debated at the time) and kindly spread open your ass. This strip search is one of several ways that additional charges can still arise so while you may have been arrested for a triviality like displaying an open bottle of Heineken to the public—a prosecution normally conducted in a decidedly minor key and resolved right at arraignments—your glove clad searcher may now discover what you most sought to conceal, that you are currently holding one of the area’s surfeit of readily-available-yet-technically-illicit anesthetics in amounts ranging anywhere from the ghostly residue of celebrations past to multiple powder bricks and in locations as presumably inviolable as within your underwear or even up your ass or maybe you possess one of the other less popular forms of the all-inclusive law enforcement term contraband. In that way can minor breaches be converted into major faults and this happens often, not occasionally. The police know this and are therefore unlikely to ignore even nonsense like the above Consumption of Alcohol in a Public Place (AC §10.125). People like you know this as well yet permit it to alter their conduct not in the slightest, ensuring in the process that the number of bodies will always remain fairly constant.

Another way you have to be careful not to pick up more charges is by resisting capture, even if only verbally, because such conduct can incite some of your lesser blue pacifists into a bit of retributory violence, with said violence then necessitating that you be charged with Resisting Arrest (PL §205.30) if only by way of explaining your injuries; which injuries better be minor lest they result in the added felony charge of Assault in the Second Degree (PL §120.05[3]), a more extensive explanation whereby a misdemeanor assault becomes a felony one by virtue of involving a police officer.

Still at the precinct, you are printed, each of your fingers rolled in black ink then onto vestal white paper. The resulting bar code is sent to Albany for the purpose of producing a rap sheet, an accordiony collection of onion paper that means everything where you are. It means everything because sentencing like Physics and other sciences builds on what came before so that the worse your past was, the worse your present will be, and no sane person doubts the rap sheet’s depiction of the past since it’s based on unalterable fingerprints and not relative ephemera like names or social security numbers. I say no sane person because when once confronted by an individual who steadfastly claimed not to recall in the slightest what I deemed to be a highly memorable conviction on his sheet and one that substantially increased his exposure, I asked him if he planned to launch a Lockean defense whereby he could not be held responsible for something he didn’t remember as such act was not properly attributable to his personal identity at which point he gave me the blankest of stares in response then started saying increasingly odd things in rapid succession until I realized that he not only sort of knew what I was talking about, which was weird enough, but that he was undeniably insane and my ill-advised Locke reference was like the thing coming after the final straw to tip him over the Axis-II-Cluster-A edge, as it were, so that I thenceforth stopped doing things like that.

Now there’s all this paperwork the A/O has to fill out and he’ll stick you in the precinct’s cell while he fills. But first, if the case has any seriousness whatsoever, he and his friends want to accumulate evidence against you and since the best evidence is quite often the very words you emit, they mostly want you to make a statement, and trust me when I tell you that by the time they’re through with you you’ll probably want you to make a statement as well. Because while the police operated under something called the forty-eight hour rule which stated that an officer charged with any kind of official misconduct cannot be questioned about it for forty-eight hours—giving him time to, among other things, retain a criminal defense attorney—you are currently operating under a different forty-eight hour rule. This one says the police can harass, intimidate, lie, cheat, steal, cajole, make false promises, and delay your arraignment (where you would be assigned an attorney who would most assuredly not allow you to speak to the police) for forty-eight hours if that’s what it takes to extract your statement. And it is following all that, not at the very instant you’re arrested as mass entertainment would have you believe, that they will advise you of your Miranda rights so your ensuing statement will be admissible.

And this is as good a time as any for you, gentle reader, to learn that I can wander a bit while storytelling so that the very imminent digressive passage on the judicial creation of Miranda warnings can be entirely skipped by the uncurious without the slightest loss of narrative steam.

Digression begins. So Ernesto Miranda is the Miranda of the warnings and the same year a famous shooter(s) would later scatter John Fitzgerald all over Jackie he was twenty-three and creating smaller-scale mayhem. A high school dropout with the mental development of an eighth-grader, Miranda had already served one year on an attempted rape conviction. In a perpendicular universe, an eighteen-year-old Phoenix girl who I’m going to say strove to dress like the glossy girls she saw in magazines and to listen to the same records as her more desirable classmates indisputably acted as attendant to some movie theater’s candy counter, the true home of such an operation’s profits incidentally. She sold synthetic butter and liquid Real Things and when done tried to go home. Enter Miranda who interrupted her trip home. He grabbed her, dragged her into his car, and drove her out into the Red, Brown, and Purple of the Painted Desert where he raped her.

Fast forward one week when the girl briefly saw what she thought was the car driven by her assailant, a 1953 Packard. She reported this belief to the police, telling them the license plate of the car was DFL312. That plate turned out to be registered to an Oldsmobile but the police discovered that DFL317 was registered to a Packard—a Packard owned by Twila N. Hoffman, Ernesto Miranda’s girlfriend. Off to 2525 West Mariposa (Oeste Butterfly) Street where Miranda was found to fit the description given by the girl. He was arrested and placed in a line-up. The girl said he most resembled the rapist but failed to make an unequivocally positive identification.

Detectives took Miranda into Interrogation Room Two where he was told he had been identified as the rapist and asked if he wanted to make a statement. He did, a signed written confession that took two hours to elicit following his initial denial of guilt and that included a section saying he understood his rights. Miranda was charged and assigned an attorney. The attorney, Alvin Moore, had plenty on his neck, however, and for a well-spent $100 he objected that the confession had been illegally obtained because no one told Ernesto, prior to his statement, that he had the right to an attorney. The trial judge said no way to that and after the jury consequently heard the confession, and was surely impressed by it, he got to prescribe twenty to thirty years in special housing as a remedy. Ernesto wondered if he could appeal and he could.

The ACLU grabbed the case and 976 days later they were in front of the court that never gets overruled with John Flynn saying, and this is a direct quote (no it isn’t): look dudes, and I refer to you thusly because this is way pre-O’Connor/Ginsberg, your Fifth Amendment deal is only protecting the rich and powerful: those who are brainy enough to know what their rights are or who have the dough to rent a lawyer. The Warren Supremes actually agreed and, in the kind of decision that makes maybe five people happy, held that before future police could torment some illiterate sap who nobody cares about into confessing his sins, real or imagined, they would have to inform him of certain rights not covered in your average eighth-grade Social Studies class. As is customary in these all-too-rare instances, Miranda’s conviction was reversed and his case set down for retrial—a trial to be conducted without his now tainted confession, without any physical evidence of a struggle, and with a dubious identification. In a stroke of all-too-common prosecutorial serendipity, however, Miranda’s common-law wife, the previously mentioned Twila, emerged to testify that Miranda had admitted the rape to her. The fact that she and Miranda were then involved in a bitter custody dispute—are these ever otherwise described?—was conveniently ignored and the new jury said something to the effect of where are your Supremes now because we agree with the first jury. Miranda was eventually paroled then, the same year his country celebrated its two hundredth birthday party, stabbed and killed in a Phoenix bar fight. As the police arrested one of his assailants they took care to read him his Miranda rights in English and Spanish. Digression ends.

Of course so famous have these warnings become that it seems they’re no longer really heard in any meaningful way so that although someone with a gun is pointedly telling you you have the right to remain silent, that is, you have the right to make their job harder, to make it more difficult for them to accumulate evidence and later proof against you, the right to decrease the chances that you will end in jail, you will still almost invariably decline to exercise that right. Instead when someone like me later asks you if you spoke you’ll affirm then say things like: he said I would get out if I made a statement or they knew I wasn’t the shooter so he said I would get a misdemeanor if I told them about the robbery or maybe I had to tell my side of the story or my mother said to tell them what happened or else I told them what happened but I didn’t write it so it’s not a statement right? or even they said once I got a lawyer there was nothing they could do for me and other similar, painful nonsense. You tell me these things and my chin drops because I’m not interested in what’s good for your soul only what’s good or bad for my case and your statement is bad for it.

And in what is possibly another mini-digression, here is, more specifically, why your statement is always bad or at least your classic no-win deal, regardless of its content: Realize that if what you said was good for you, you can reliably expect that it will never be repeated because the prosecution needn’t present it at trial or even tell anyone about it. On the other far more likely hand where what you said damages your prospects, then you likely just reduced me to arguing that the cop misinterpreted or improperly influenced the content or, worse, just made it up out of whole cloth. Only I’m arguing this in Manhattan not the Bronx or Brooklyn meaning a substantial portion of the listening jury has graduate degrees and nannies and they don’t think Police Officers do things like that and aren’t about to be disabused of that notion by a criminal like you. So thanks. All by way of saying that statements are good evidence for the prosecution so the cops know to get them and thus do, with occasional help from an assistant district attorney sitting in front of a bargain videocam if the case is serious enough.

Back to that paperwork the A/O’s filling out with you in a nearby cell. He’s scribbling and hunting and pecking while asking you the occasional question (these are mostly pedigree questions like name, address, etc., which everyone in a robe agrees don’t require preceding Miranda warnings) and you may not know it but your future’s in them pages, those police reports. Because those reports are Rosario material and as such must be turned over to your attorney at some point, usually seconds, before trial. And even at that late stage believe me that these reports are usually his only true friends within the cruel, lonely world he operates in. Friends because in all their babblative beauty they make claims early and often that the cop now has to mirror perfectly or else gift him the inconsistency so that if it suits you he will stand there at trial and wave them at the cop like holier verity was never written boy. And the Rosario List that comes with the material will look substantially like this (well, without the explanatory parentheticals):

6. Vouchers, Property Clerk Invoices, Invoice Worksheets: (about any property recovered and most importantly by whom and from where).

Only longer.

Now the paperwork’s complete and you’re on the move because the A/O is taking you to Central Booking. Central Booking is located at One Police Plaza and is the first of three post-precinct levels you must inhabit before meeting an attorney who will guide you through the final formal steps by which those who stay in are separated from those who get out. (Speaking only figuratively, these levels are concentrically circular and either expand while ascending or constrict while descending, depending on your vantage point). On this first level, you are handed off to cops previously, and likely disciplinarily, extracted from the street to work desks. They take charge of you while the A/O leaves to meet with one of the assistant district attorneys working in the Early Case Assessment Bureau, or ECAB, or Complaint Room, of the District Attorney’s Office. Here, the newly-assigned DA, after interviewing the A/O, writes the criminal court complaint that formally charges you with a specific crime(s) and which includes a short narrative of the incident written in law-enforcementese and signed by the swearing cop. Note that this is why I earlier called precinct charges something like informal even though nobody else calls them that, my justification being that these arrest charges don’t really amount to much in the final analysis since this DA is actually the one who decides what crime to charge you with or whether to even charge you at all. Consequently, it’s the most common thing in the world to see charges that were inflated and overly optimistic, from the officers’ standpoint, reduced to something far more realistic by the party actually being asked to prove the damn thing, making these arrest charges something more along the lines of a recommendation really. Anyway, the DA additionally fills out a DA Data Sheet that also becomes Rosario and that includes more facts about the case and what his colleague’s bail request should be at the upcoming arraignment.

Back at Central Booking, your rap sheet returns from Albany and the cops check it to see if there are any outstanding bench warrants, arrest orders judges issue whenever a defendant stands them up at a court date. Now you can graduate to the next level located across the street in the building where this entire mess will come to fruition. This intermediate level is buried beneath your ultimate pre-arraignment destination and is colored to make you feel you’re inside a lime. Here, you sit in a cell and wait to meet a representative of the Criminal Justice Agency who wants to interview you to produce a CJA Sheet. This sheet informs the judge of the extent of your community ties and thus presumably the likelihood of your return to court, a critical factor allegedly used by the judge in determining whether or not to set bail on your case and if so how much. What you’re rooting for here is a CJA verdict of RECOMMENDED VERIFIED TIES although that doesn’t exactly guarantee you anything either.

When this and other delays have been exhausted you’re ready for the pens directly behind the arraignment courtroom. To get there you’re walked down a perfectly symmetric hall that overhead, every eight or so paces, has metronomically intermittent, dimpled-plastic rectangles containing two tubes each of flickering light that end well before the dark base of the stairs. At the top of those stairs is a short hallway that leads to those two identical but transposed cells where you are told to wait until a lawyer like me calls you ad nominem into one of the six interview booths.

And on bad nights like that night with Manos you will scarcely have room to move as a great many other bodies wait there with you, the cell walls straining against the immured humanity; the number of bodies held therein so great you would not think so many could simultaneously do wrong. A teeming multitude with its components angling desperately for their just portion of the surrounding air and now you’re ready to declare Hobbes victorious over Rousseau with scant need for further deliberation. Because people sleep face-down on the sticky floor, the ones who aren’t too pained from active withdrawal, and you’re handed a small carton of milk with an unsealed plastic bag of white bread squeezing baloney and cheese to bleed solar-yellow mustard while you smell those alien body parts you least wanted to smell, watch dirty hands tremble to hold bloody scabs, feel beset by voices indistinctly grouped in throng and in the corner, as if on display, is an uncovered toilet next to a payphone available to any member of that preterite crowd capable of inserting a quarter and willing to make a phone call while watching someone take, or more accurately give, a shit. But worst is that every time a body goes out to see the judge it comes right back in shaking its head and it doesn’t take much to deduce that you will soon be doing the same. That’s where you are, where You ended up.

Where I was, by contrast, was fifteen yards away staring at an empty basket and praying it wouldn’t fill with more yellow (felonies) and blue (misdemeanors) papers describing additional bodies I would meet under duress so they could lie to me. But it did fill and the filling compelled me to action. And I’m going to start start here because I met Dane for the first time that night; that meeting and consequently the many subsequent ones a pure product of arraignment-schedule chance. We stared at the basket then each other and I realized that to that point he had said maybe five extra-judicial words. Consistent with that he absently grabbed an unfairly large share of the cases and went off to interview them without a sound.

Linda was a battle-scarred veteran of double digit years who had mastered the expected art form of appearing to be quite busy while doing little of value and was therefore nowhere near the basket. I took what remained, mostly yellow some blue, and went to the back to do the interviews. I planned to do them with extreme velocity too because I had done about a quillion already and wanted desperately to get the hell out of there. The first case I looked at was Darril Thorton, a yellow back charged with Sex Abuse in the First Degree (PL §130.65). I called his name softly, hoping he wouldn’t answer, but he immediately moved in, a let’s-get-this-over-with look on his face. He spoke first, obviously yelling but still creating only a barely audible signal:

—noise background,

My getting out or what?!

My money’s on what, followed by a pause long enough to be uncomfortable.

Oh c’mon I didn’t do nothing man! This is bullshit you got to get me up out of here on the double yo, she’s lying on me!

Wait let me see this, holding the ivory rectangle up to the bar-streaked light and nodding negatively, uh-uh.

What uh-uh?

I don’t want you man, starting to walk out but not really.

Why? What’s the problem?

Because man, sitting back down, I wanted an 18B, only thing you guys ever did for me is send me upstate man. No offense but that’s just keeping it real on your ass, pointing but not at it.

Well, whatever, you’re sort of stuck with me so let’s just see how it goes for a bit okay?

No.

Who’s Valerie Grissom?

Man you all right. Okay, she’s a crackhead. That’s what I’m trying to tell you officer, I mean lawyer. She’s making up some crazy stuff, everybody knows she’s a fabricator and a confabulator. Everybody knows it!

You know that for a fact?

What, that she confabulates?

No, that she’s a crackhead.

Everybody knows!

How do you know? You smoke with her?

I don’t smoke man but I seen her smoke.

So she has a record?

Man she been popped tons of times, laughing but still managing to sound angrier somehow.

You know her date of birth?

Na man, I ain’t know her like that.

She married, kids?

Kids somewhere I think but they ain’t around.

What’s your relationship to her.

Man we ain’t related. Shit, what the fuck you think?

I mean how do you know her?

Just from the neighborhood man, everybody knows her she’s always up in everybody’s business.

How long you known her?

A few years man!

Just relax a bit. She’s saying that two weeks ago at 322 West 119th Street . . . that where she lives?

She’s sort of homeless but I think she stays there a lot with a friend of hers.

She’s saying that you forced her down on the bed—

What?!

Let me finish. She says you threw her down on the bed, put your forearm across her neck and forced your fingers into her vagina.

How many fingers?

Just says fingers.

Can they do that?

Not specify how many fingers?

Yeah.

Yes.

Well that’s crazy man. That’s a complete and totally utter lie, I’ve never even been in a bed with her! What bed are they saying? I can’t believe this! It’s a total set up. Total. Set. Up. You have to get me out of here.

You ever had a sexual relationship with her?

Never.

The truth, Darril.

Never, I swear!

Well did the two of you have some kind of argument over something?

I haven’t even seen her in like . . . let me see . . . two months?

So what’s going on?

You tell me.

Well you’re saying this woman with whom you’ve never had more than a casual relationship and haven’t even seen in two months suddenly decided to falsely accuse you of essentially raping her. Does that make any sense? If the two of you have no beef and you’ve never been more than just acquaintances why would she possibly make this up?

I have a theory but I can tell by looking at you, which he then did exaggeratedly, that you will not accept it. I can see that in your eyes.

What’s the reason?

Your eyes.

What’s the reason she’s lying?

Fine, The Hater.

What?

The Accuser.

The what-user?

The fallen and rebellious angel himself.

The hell you talking about?

The Prince of Darkness man. You heard of him right?

Okay I have heard of him but what does that have to do with this?

Look I found the Lord okay? I’m about to become a minister as a matter of fact. And one thing I’ve learned, in my studies and etceteras, is that the Dark Prince gets into people man. Now I’m trying to get my life together. I been out of prison twenty-three months. You see I been reporting to parole and working as a mechanic right there on 118th Street. Why would I do this? Tell me that. I would have to be crazy to do that insertion and whatnot. I’m trying to stay clean but The Evil One sees that man. He sees that and he says I’m taking this man down, this righteous man who hath turned to the good book must now falleth. And that’s why this is happening. But all I know is I never touched that woman. It’s a lie, she’s a false witness being brought to bear.

Well, whatever the reason, she’s saying you did this and—

I done told you the reason, the very archenemy of God has—

Okay whatever stop. The bottom line is that as a result of her statement to the police you’ve been charged with this and we’re about to go in front of a judge who’s going to decide what your bail is.

Bail?! But I’m innocent, they have to release me.

I doubt they’ll see it that way.

So what exactly my looking at here man?

Numbers?

Yeah man, what else?

You been upstate?

I’m a mandatory persistent man. That’s what you’re going to see when you look at my raps so I’ll just up and save you the time.

Okay then you know the deal.

What kind of charge is that? Abuse?

D violent. Yeah, I see two prior violent felonies. Two to four on a rob two and you’re currently on parole after doing five to fifteen on a manslaughter right?

First of all, that was an accident man. It was just a fight and I was defending myself. Second of all, both of those cases were before I found the Lord.

They still count. That’s two violent felonies and this is another one so you are a mandatory as you said—

I know.

Which means you’re looking at a minimum here of twelve to life and a max of twenty-five to life—

Fuck.

Right, so this is no joke and you’re going to figure out Darril that the only way I’m going to possibly be able to help you is for you to start leveling with me a lot more than you have so far.

I’m telling you the truth. I didn’t do this.

Listen, I don’t have all night. There’s got to be more to it than this. You’re not giving me any possible credible reason why she would make this up.

I told you, the Archfiend.

By credible I mean a reason that doesn’t involve him . . . so that it?

Anything else?

I’ve told you everything I know. I didn’t do this.

How can I get in touch with her to interview her? She have a phone?

I don’t know. But she still stays in that building last I heard.

Okay, any questions?

What are my chances? Am I going home?

No.

No, just like that?

Be realistic, please, everything I just told you.

So what’s my 180.80 date then?

Well you were arrested yesterday, Wednesday, so next Tuesday.

She needs to come to court that day or else they’ll release me right?

Pretty much true. They need an indictment that day or else they have to release you, yeah. There’s one exception but—

Let them know I’m going in the grand jury too.

Look my feeling is it would not be a great idea for you to testify in the grand jury.

Why do you say that? I’m innocent.

Well foremost the grand jurors are going to hear about your record in a way your trial jury never would and for that reason alone there’s no way they’ll dismiss the case. As a result the only thing you’re going to accomplish is to give the DA an early version of your story.

I don’t care what version they get because it’s the truth. So there.

Maybe so but that’ll be small consolation when you get indicted.

Unbelievable.

Listen we don’t have to decide anything right now. I’ll serve cross and we’ll discuss it next court date when we have more time and when I’ll know more about the case. Deal?

Okay but I’m testifying.

All right. I’ll talk to the DA before your next court date to see what they’re offering.

I’m not taking anything!

Well then just to satisfy my curiosity okay? Any other questions before we go in front of the judge.

Just that I’m innocent.

Okay.

I know you seen my record and I have committed felonies. The robbery was a way to get money and I know it was stupid. The manslaughter? Fine, that was a fight and I cut him. All that was before I found the Lord by the way. Before. But this? This would be like pure evil to have done something like this to someone like that and I’m not evil. I am not a person who traffics in evil, dig? So you have to believe I’m innocent.

Okay.

I mean it. You have to!

I believe you.

No for real don’t just say it. You have to believe I’m innocent.

See you in front of the judge.

Wait a minute. I mean it man! I need a lawyer who believes in my innocence. You have to believe that to do this case.

You’re wrong I don’t, I just don’t. It’s not going to make me work harder on your case like in some stupid movie and it’s certainly not going to make it more likely that you walk. In fact, if you really are innocent then it’s probably going to hurt you and your case more than anything because, for one thing, I would probably be so distracted by the novelty of the situation I’d be rendered ineffective and, for another, your innocence might mean your devilish theory is true in which case we’d really be screwed because from where I’m sitting the devil appears be pretty effective, certainly more so than the average DA. So stop, I beg.

I want another lawyer.

One’s enough and if you mean a different one then that request is denied as well so just chill as much as possible for someone facing the rest of their life in jail and let me handle it. I know what I’m doing, although admittedly only in this severely limited area. Agreed?

All right.

Anything else?

No.

Good Darril, now kindly step out so I can interview the next.

Ah Chut. AH CHUT!

Bless you motherfucker! Ha ha!

Mr. Chut?

Yeh.

Is that you? Are you Ah Chut?

Yeh.

Here’s my card I’m going to be your attorney. Do you speak English?

Nuh.

Cantonese? Mandarin?

Cantonese yeh Cantonese!

Well . . . okay . . . were you selling batteries on the subway?

Yeh. Wuh?

You sell battery subway?

Cantonese.

No, I know but there’s no interpreter and I want to get you out of jail.

Yuh.

You sell battery on subway yes?

Yih.

And you don’t have a license right?

Cantonese.

No license right?

No license no.

Okay you go home soon okay?

Home?

Yeah you go home. Okay?

Yah. Cantonese?

No. You’re going to have to go home in English because there’s no interpreter and it would take hours to get one.

Yeh.

Okay step out.

Out? pointing.

Yes.

Glenn. BEN GLENN!

That’s me,

You don’t have to say it three.

How you doing Mr. Glenn? Here’s my card. My name’s Casi and I’ll be your attorney. You’ve been charged with Criminal Mischief in the Fourth Degree, that’s a class A misdemeanor. This guy Hal Posano is saying you stood in the entrance to his pizzeria and wouldn’t move. He’s saying that when he and his workers tried to get you to move you kicked the door and shattered the glass. Is all that true?

The truth lies somewhere in between

I wanted some pizza but didn’t have any green

Is that what led to the argument? You couldn’t pay for some pizza you had eaten? What happened? How do you end up kicking this guy’s door in?

Frankly, I refuse to divulge any further the nature of my defense.

To trust a stranger like you simply makes little sense.

I can’t help but notice, Mr. Glenn, that you are speaking entirely in a kind of rudimentary spoken verse, is there a reason for that?

What you’ve just said is fully true.

I speak solely in rhyme how about you?

I tend not to. I also see, looking down now, that your last case was dismissed after a 730 examination. What that means is that a psychiatrist examined you and determined that you were too sick to face a criminal case and the case was dismissed. Right? Remember that? So I think what I may do is have a psychiatrist examine you again to see how you’re doing, okay? The problem is that because of your record and because of the judge we’re going to be in front of, it’s unlikely you will be offered something that’s going to get you out and if there’s no disposition this judge is going to set bail so—

The judge can set all the bail he wants and I won’t complain

When Batman wasn’t fighting crime his name was Bruce Wayne.

True, I guess. If the judge sets bail, however, and you’re homeless like you told CJA, then you’re going to be in jail while the case is going on. So I think the best way to proceed from your standpoint is to have a psychiatric evaluation done. This way if you’re too sick to know what’s going on, the case will be dismissed and you’ll be civilly committed to psychiatric care. On the other hand if you’re fine, then we can try to get a plea that will get you out. Okay? Mr. Glenn?

Do your best but remember you are only epidermally-covered bone

And perhaps the disease in me is one you too own.

Okay. Well it’s not a very serious case so we’ll see what I can do.

Listen Casi sorry to interrupt, a court officer stuck just his head in then kept it perfectly trained on me as if Glenn were a mere product of my imagination, but do you have Glenda Deeble, Robert Coomer, and Terrens Lake?

Yeah, what about them?

They’re all specials so they’re on the bench and we need to get them done before we can bring more bodies out.

All right, Glenn had vanished while I spoke. The bench referred to here was not the judge’s bench but rather the two L-positioned pews to the far left of it where all defendants were placed immediately prior to having their case called. Some, like the following, went directly there for various reasons rather than stopping in the holding cell and were interviewed in a wooden kiosk-like structure located nearby. I went there.

Oh Casi I’m so sorry, Linda with hand on cheek cavity caused by open mouth, you took everything. Want to give me some of those?

It’s all right I just have these three on the bench then another blue and I’m done.

Probably shouldn’t do anymore anyway with tomorrow my last day.

What?

Yeah you didn’t know?

No, didn’t even know you were leaving.

Really? Yeah, tomorrow’s my last day.

Wow, where you going?

I’m going to be a real estate agent.

Real estate? Get out, let me do these then tell me all about it.

Glenda Deeble?

Yes.

In there Glenda . . . here’s my card I’m going to represent you.

How do you say that name?

Casi kind of like Lassie but not really, who’s Ray Doherty?

That’s my husband.

Cops are saying you helped him sell methadone to a person who turned out to be an undercover police officer. That true?

No it’s not. He might have sold but I had nothing to do with it.

So what happened?

Okay, we had just come out of the methadone clinic which is like a block from where we was arrested. The clinic was going to be closed the next day so after we drank one inside they gave us each an extra one to take home and drink the next day, I guess today. Anyways as soon as we walk out this guy comes up and starts begging Ray for his methadone. He was like really insisting, offering to pay for it, and he looked like he was in really bad shape. I kind of walked away at this point because I been busted once before for selling my methadone and besides I couldn’t sell mines anyway because, as you can see, I’m five months pregnant and if I go through any kind of withdrawal it could hurt the baby. So I think Ray might have sold to him but I’m not sure.

Where did you get arrested?

He talked to the guy then we tried to get to the train on Hudson but we were arrested right there, near the entrance. Something like five cops jump out of a van and throw us against a gate. They took my bottle of methadone, the one I need for today. Can I get that back?

No they’re saying it’s evidence. But you can get methadone inside if you’re held in.

Wait, I’m going to jail?

I don’t know yet.

I don’t understand why I was even arrested. I didn’t sell anything.

They’re saying your husband did the actual selling but that you helped him by looking back and forth, in other words being a lookout. They’re charging you with acting in concert.

Is that a felony?

Yeah a C felony, same as if you actually made the exchange.

So some cop was nearby and saw this happen, nodding yes.

No, the guy your husband sold to was an undercover pretending to be a drug addict.

Oh Christ, she looked up. Can they do that? Can they? I mean this guy was practically begging Ray to sell to him. I know for a fact he never intended to sell his stuff but the guy just kept asking him and finally I guess he convinced him to do it. Isn’t that like trapment or something? She tilted her head and raised both eyebrows, can they do that to us?

Well the problem is you have a prior conviction for the same thing, selling methadone, and unfortunately that kind of effectively negates the defense of entrapment. It also means you’re a predicate felon which means you’re facing a minimum of three to six in this case.

Can’t they bring it down?

They can, and I’ll talk to the DA and try to get you a misdemeanor but for now the only thing we’re really concerned with is your bail status.

I don’t have any money for bail, I’m on SSI.

Yeah I’m going to try to get the judge to release you with a court date to return.

On my own RnR?

Right.

You think he’ll do it?

I don’t know, maybe, we’ll find out shortly. Where do you live?

We live in one of those hotels. I have full-blown AIDS so DAS pays for it and they give me my medication.

I see. And how’s your health now because you look kind of yellow.

That’s because I have Hepatitis. I just got out of St. Claire’s after a transfusion about a week ago.

Oh. Well the last thing we have to discuss is the grand jury. If I can’t convince the DA to give you a misdemeanor then that means she’s going to go into the grand jury and try to indict you on a felony drug sale. You have the right to testify in the grand jury and tell your side of the story in the hopes that they will dismiss or at least reduce the charges.

Doesn’t it get worser for you if you do that?

It could, every case is different though. Here, I think—

I don’t want to testify in no grand jury Casi.

Well you don’t have to decide—

No way.

Why not? Listen if what you told me is true then—

It is true, it is, but I’m not stupid. Look at me. Things aren’t exactly going good for me here. I know that if I go in there I’ll just end up making things worse because that’s what I do.

Let’s just—

Because that’s the way things happen in my life since I was maybe six.

No not maybe, I was exactly six, that birthday forward.

I understand and that may be so but my experience is—

Things probably go well for you, I can tell just by looking at you, but for me if my luck wasn’t bad I wouldn’t be lucky at all. Everything I touch turns to shit. I know this.

I don’t accept that.

You’re right not everything, not these five months. I been good since I found out I was with child. You don’t know how many times these months I says to myself, like, what could they say if I did everything right from here on out? For real, if I did everything right up to and beyond that day would I really be that different than those moms in their soccer vans? I’d be like them and my baby, at least, would have to look at me the right way, he wouldn’t know. To him I’m just mom. He doesn’t know. The things I’ve done. I seen that look. I want to be at the end of that look. And if I am and I return it the right way then that’s something isn’t it? That’s one thing I would’ve done good and no one could say different right?

I don’t—

Right?

Definitely. But look, about the grand jury.

So I don’t want to try anything tricky because, like I said, I know I’ll just mess it all up when I’m this close to doing it right for once. I mean the only reason I was even there was to make sure I don’t have any withdrawal that could hurt the baby. I’m close, I’m close. If you could just get me a misdemeanor and city time I would be really grateful and definitely take it, as long as I’m out in time you know? And I wouldn’t be one of these people who complains about their lawyer neither. I would know it was a good deal and I would take it, even though I had nothing to do with this particular sale and even though I think it’s wrong what that cop did, with the entrapping.

Okay.

Turns to shit.

I understand. And believe me, I’m not normally a big fan of putting people in the grand jury either but your instincts about a possible defense were generally right so I feel that perhaps maybe possibly you might if—

I don’t want to, please.

Then you won’t. That’s all. You certainly don’t have to. It’s your decision to make. Do you have any questions before we go in front of the judge?

You think I’ll get out?

Maybe.

If I have the baby inside, they take it.

I know. Anything else?

No, just thank you.

Okay, you can step out.

Robert Coomer?

Yes!

Close the door behind you Robert.

You have before you a completely innocent man and my question to you sir, if I may call you that, is this: what . . . am . . . I . . . charged . . . with?

Robbery.

I’m innocent.

David Sanders is saying you pulled a knife on him about two months ago and forced him to give you two hundred dollars.

An outlandish accusation.

Who is he?

Who is you?

My name is Casi, here’s my card, I’ve been assigned your case. Now who’s David Sanders?

It’s a long story young man so what I’ll do is give you the condensated version.

You’re charged with Robbery in the First Degree, a B violent felony with a minimum jail sentence of five years in prison, so I think you should tell me at least the medium-length version.

As you like it young man. Now I met Mr. Sanders, a.k.a. The Colonel, about eight months ago at the park.

What park?

Morningside Park. Now at this park many of us congregate to play chess. Everyone knows that any day of the week you can find Robert Delano Coomer there playing chess.

Who’s that?

That’s me.

Oh. Sorry, go ahead.

I mean geez.

All right continue, where did you live at this time?

I lived in the park that’s why I was always playing chess there. Anyway I noticed that this man, Mr. David Sanders, would come and observe on quite a few occasions and so we got to conversating.

You became friends.

Now don’t go jumping the gun that’s the problem with you youngsters nowadays. We didn’t become friends at all in fact we were in constant disputation.

About what?

Well the fact is I done come up with a new chess opening. And the truth is that this chess opening has confounded the grandmasters and dumbfounded the neophytes.

Great, so where’s the problem?

Well the further fact is we had irreconcilable philosophical differences respecting just how good my opening was.

What’s the opening?

You really want to know?

Sure.

And you won’t tell anyone?

No.

You sure?

Yes. Even if I wanted to, the attorney-client privilege would prevent me. I would lose my license to thrill.

It’s a queen’s rook pawn opening.

Certainly unique but it seems like you would have a big problem with development.

Damn straight it was a good opening, the best! Sixteen hundred years they been playing this game and it took a homeless brother in the park to come up with the perfect opening. Well I become very protective of my creation and whatnot and that done led to some argumentation between us. Anyway, after awhiles we reconciled our differences behind us, and he started letting me stay with him once in a while. Then I moved into his place for good.

Were you two involved?

Meaning?

Were you his boyfriend?

No, nothing like that, we was just friends. I ain’t gay nor nothing. He was letting me live there while I tried to get back on my feet you know?

Were you working?

No he was working and would pay the rent. What happened was I came into some money by way of my brother. He’s some kinda rapper though all I knows is growing up the boy couldn’t rhyme cat with hat. So anyway David seen me dropping bills left and right and he felt I should have been directing some of that his way since I ain’t never been paying no rent. Anyway, one day I come home and he’s all in my shit taking out my money. We got into it and I hit him in self-defense but I never pulled a knife on him and I did take back the money but it was mines anyway. The truth is we both hit each other and the only thing that ended the fight is that we both started bleeding and he kinda panicked because I’m positive and he hasn’t had the balls to get himself tested; ignorance be bliss that’s what he say. So I moved out like that night and I moved in with another friend of mine who liked my rook opening a lot more than David.

When was that?

That was like two months ago.

Who did you move in with?

Warren Holliday but that didn’t work out neither cause he’s like a known felon and shit.

What does that mean?

Well he’s a felon and it was knowed.

Why was that a problem? Everyone’s a felon.

He just done crazy things that’s all.

You seen David since you moved out?

Two days ago he came to visit me in the hospital.

Yeah why were you in the hospital?

I was on a roof with the professor smoking crack when the cops rushed up. I got a running start and tried to jump on to the roof of the building next door like in them action movies only I didn’t make it. I fell three stories and shattered both my legs see?

How did David know?

Somebody must’ve told him. When he showed up I was shocked man. Cause this was like my nemesis you know what I mean? But he was saying he still loved me and that he didn’t want me arrested and that when I got out of the hospital I could come and stay with him again since the apartment I was staying in is now a crackhouse and’s been condemned to death. Anyway when they were going to release me from the hospital the police were there and they arrested me saying that David had filed a complaint against me like two months ago but they wouldn’t tell me what for. I don’t think he’s going to impress the charges is what I’m saying.

Well if you’re right and he doesn’t testify in the grand jury within six days you’ll be released.

I think that’s what will happen because two days ago he was telling me how much he loved me and all.

I thought you two weren’t involved like that? Well?

Okay I lied, we were, but I wouldn’t want that to be common knowledge throughout the community and whatnot.

Don’t worry, both your opening and this other secret are safe with me.

Any questions before we go in front of the judge?

No, I understand.

Good then, but actually, I have a question.

What?

Professor?

He’s a guy from the neighborhood who’s always getting good rock . . . he once took a class in college.

na, i don’t sell drugs. TNT just came up and swept a bunch of us up i wasn’t doing nothing.

Who was selling there?

tons a guys be selling out there, it’s a big spot.

What were you doing out there?

just hanging out with a friend.

Who?

we call him Boop.

What’s his real name?

i d’know, just Boop.

Where does he live?

d’know, think downtown.

Anybody else there that you know who saw what happened?

na, yo i got a question though.

Yeah.

in the van they were saying to each other that i was a JD lost and shit. what up with that? if i’m a what do you call lost subject, what am i doing in the van right?

Lean back a second . . . is that what you were wearing when you were arrested?

yeah.

Including that shirt that says LAND OF THE LOST?

yeah.

There’s your answer.

what?

The cop who buys radios a description to his arrest team of the guy he wants picked up for selling to him. The description is always JD, as in John Doe, followed by the distinguishing feature of the seller, like your clothing in this case.

Well you’ve got a big problem now right? When you took the plea on the other case the judge told you that one of the conditions you had to meet before you would get probation was to avoid getting rearrested right?

yeah! how’d you know?

And now you’ve picked up another sale. So basically the judge doesn’t have to give you probation anymore, she can sentence you to state prison instead. Not to mention this case where you’re facing a minimum of one to three.

but i wasn’t selling this time. i didn’t have stash or marked money on me nor nothing so how can they charge me with a sale?

They can and for someone who doesn’t sell drugs you sure got the terminology down. Who do you live with?

my grandmother.

Why did you tell CJA you live with your girlfriend?

cause i stay in both places while my moms is trying to get me back.

Get you back from where?

cause she gave up custody when i was a kid and now she’s trying to get me back, we in family court next week. she’s suppose to be in court right now with her common-law fiancé and whatnot.

Well is she? You see her?

na, i don’t think so, but i can’t see the whole space.

What’s her name?

Tara.

Lake?

Simms.

I’ll look for her. We’re going in front of the judge soon and he’s going to decide how much your bail is. Any questions?

nah but could you tell the judge that i ain’t trying to do no jail time cause i just had a son, he’s three weeks old and he needs me and shit. i think my baby mama’s coming too.

I will kid, step out.

Listen can I talk to you about a case, docket ending 654, Ah Chut?

Uh-huh.

This is a sixty-one-year-old first arrest. Unlicensed General Vendor. Can I get an ACD?

Dithorderly conduct and time served.

I know but give me an ACD. This guy’s sixty-one. He’s been in the system twenty-nine hours.

I don’t give ACDs on UGV. I’ll give him a 240.20 and time served.

Even for this guy? He’s been in twenty-nine hours on a first arrest for selling batteries on the subway.

Sorry.

Well here’s the problem. The guy doesn’t speak a syllable of English which